As the sun goes down on yet another day here at HATS, I am not going to lie, I am pure exhausted. Karen, Seth, and I have been working vigorously on trying to finish our house and to put the finishing touches on the girl’s house. A lot has happened since we last conversed, however, we are still living in a screened-in porch! 🙂 We truly love it, though. It is a different time in life. We have not gotten everything done in our house, simply because little things just keep popping up. The count down of things to finish has begun and we are very excited to finish them and get moved in.
Sunday was the elections and from what I have heard they were one of the calmest yet. We will see if this holds true on March 30th when Haiti gets the results. It was so calm in the area that day that we had visitors. Karen, Seth, and I were using the day as a catch up to read and relax. I took my time to read and sew curtains. There are many things in life that I would love to learn. One of them being to learn how to sew. Well, I knew we would not have much access to decorations for the house in Haiti and would need some extra, so I brought some sheets and pillow cases to use. On Sunday, I hand sewed my first curtain! And there are many more to come. What I am even more excited about is getting to install them. Since the walls are cement, we will have to drill holes and install screws. I have worked with power tools a lot because my dad and husband are both carpenters, but what is really exciting is that I will get to sew my own curtains and install them myself! Talk about learning to do things hands-on. Man, I have needed Haiti a long time ago! 🙂 A wonderful surprise showed up in the afternoon. It was a group from Indiana and Illinois that were staying at the Borel complex. It was fun to have them around and to get to talk with people from around our home. One of them even knew where Hillsboro and Coffeen were. Hillsboro is my hometown. The sign reads 6,800 people. What is very interesting is that the year before the sign read 4,400 people. No we did not have that many people move there in a year. That year we decided to count our inmates. So, yes, a third of our population is the prison. 🙂 As for Seth’s hometown, Coffeen, it only has about 400 people, so it was very shocking for someone to know where it was!
Monday was a very fun day for the timoun (children) because they did not have school as it was a study day for their big exams this week. Monday morning the older students went to the school to practice up for the test and when they came back home we threw a birthday party for Leica and Mirlande. The girls were so excited for their gifts that they didn’t even eat or drink their cookies and soda that were handed out. Leica turned 7 this year and for her birthday Karen gave her sunglasses and a big 3-D form princess castle to make and hang on her wall. Mirlande turned 10 and for her birthday she got sunglasses and a watch. The girls had a blast and were all smiles the whole day. A couple hours after the party, a group of women came and stopped in with Missionary James for a visit. They are doing women’s conferences in the area. One of the women was Tifi’s sponsor, so she got to see how much Tifi had grown physically and mentally since the last time they saw each other. For Seth and I, it was great to have missionary James to visit. He is about Seth’s age and really down to earth. We were discussing what we would miss most, other than friends and family, obviously. It didn’t take us long to shout out Dr. Pepper. James was right there with us on that one. His supply now was from his last trip out of the country and he is rationing it. 🙂 I continued with a cheeseburger, french fries, …can you tell I am a junk food queen. As the conversation came to a close, I suddenly realized what I would miss most is ICE. I have an infatuation with ice and I love everything to be cold. That is not possible here. The electricity is not constant. The only way they keep things cold when the generator is off is by putting it next to a huge block of ice in the freezer that melts throughout the week.
Tuesday was the start of the students big exam week. The students had prepared and left earlier Tuesday morning to conquer the tests. While they were at school, Seth and I took the time to write all our thank-yous to people back at home who have supported us. We were planning on tackling them little by little until we finished them, however, then we learned of the mail system in Haiti. In the U.S. it’s so easy to send and receive mail. If the U.S. mail system is like making ramen noodles then the Haiti mail system is like making chicken cordon bleuau Prince where we can pick it up, but not everyday, just on Wednesdays or Saturdays, because that’s when they’re open. Port au Prince is a three hour drive from here so as you can guess, we don’t make that trip too often. Karen was planning on making the trip today with Luckner to get much needed supplies that we can get no where else, so the task had to be done. She was going to be stopping by the Agape mail office and we needed that package sent.
After the thank-yous were complete and the envelope was sealed, Seth and I set out on our own little adventures. Seth’s job was to finish putting together our shower rod and do a screen for our main door area.
The day before at the birthday party I promised Leica I would work on the castle that she got for her birthday with her, so that was my job. I think I got the much better end of the deal. Leica put together the princess castle, while Mirlande and Karma watched and JJ checked in on us every once in a while to make sure we were doing it right. We had a blast and completed the entire castle! I didn’t realize until we were finished that we had sat for 2 and half hours on the porch floor working on the project. The girls must have been super interested to sit there for that long! As you can tell from the pictures, that after we finished we celebrated with some silliness!
Today is Wednesday and as I mentioned earlier, Karen and Luckner headed off to Port au Prince, which left Seth and I to watch over Ti Luc and to get him ready in the morning! This is one of our favorite task here at HATS because Ti Luc has such a great sense of humor. We got an hour all to ourselves to play, eat breakfast, and get ready for school. Karen will have to tell you all about Port au Prince, but while she was away it was party time (I mean work time) here on the compound. 🙂 I went to work on our house painting. I touched up white, moved on to purple, and now it looks as if blue may be in my horizon for a while. Three of the next tasks involve blue paint! 🙂 As for Seth. he installed our shower rod, hooked up the hot water heater, worked on a screen for area at bottom of our stairs, and started to get the stove ready. It will be done in no time.
My dream for this weekend is to be moved all the way in by Friday night. It will be cutting it close. I would love be to sitting on my couch Friday night with the breeze blowing in, watching a movie on our computer with my husband as M&M cookies bake in the oven! Sounds glorious, Eh? (as Karen would say) 🙂
~Jessie
